Like every other kid of my generation — and thanks to syndication, for generations to come — I was a fan of the wondrous television canine Lassie, but l didn’t know a pair of cats would write new chapters in the old story.

Back in 1954 television audiences were introduced to a black and white collie named Lassie. The dog wasn’t black and white but the television was, so who could tell?

This dog could tell if the creek was rising, the truck was being stolen or the barn was on fire.

Sadly the people in Lassie’s family were materially less intelligent than the dog, and she — the beast was actually male, but on TV he played a she — would do everything up to jumping on the dinner table and writing a message in the mashed potatoes with her/his paw to get their attention.

Jumping more than a half a century forward, my dear bride, the saintly Susan, and I share our house with a sweet dog and a pair of sometimes diabolical cats.

The two felines, Kola and Koi, are unlikely candidates for Lassie’s furry mantle, but these two are more than the lazy rug-warmers they often seem to be.

We learned early on that Koi, the female, was endowed with a self-destructive level of curiosity.

When she was not much more than a kitten, Koi climbed onto the dining room table to investigate the flickering enigma that was a burning candle. Before we could intervene the strange beast — critters are afraid of fire, right? — swatted the flame out with her naked paw.

Our first clue these litter-mate twins had a touch of Lassie onboard came from Kola.

Kola usually spends his time scratching an itch or running, terrified, from his own shadow. Then one night Kola exploded out of the cat door that led into the garage. He marched up to Susan and me with an aggressively demanding meow. He kept chattering at us and moving toward the garage.

Turning to Susan, I said, “Ma, I think the barn’s on fire!” We no longer have a barn, but when we went with the cat into the garage we discovered a light fixture had fallen from the ceiling and shattered on the floor. We both looked at Kola in astonishment.

We assumed it was a fluke, until some months later when Koi got into the act.

She started pacing back and forth in front of the hall closet, yowling like somebody had just broken her food bowl.

We figured she just wanted to go into the closet, which is officially a cat-free zone, but eventually I decided to look inside. A small battery-operated light I had mounted in the closet had fallen to the floor. A trend was developing here.

We’ve reached the point where we tend to listen when the cats go into Lassie mode.

The other night I got home from work well after dark. I’d parked my beloved truck in the garage and went into the main part of the house.

Minutes later, Kola came stomping up to me, meowing with purpose. Without asking any stupid questions this time I followed him into the garage. The door on the truck wasn’t properly closed so the dome light was on.

Just how Kola knew that light shouldn’t be on is something of a mystery to me. He likes to nap on the hood of the truck and maybe he was just complaining because he didn’t like the light in his eyes.

Kola has taken on another warning role that I don’t entirely appreciate. Somehow this fur-coated alarm clock knows about when I usually get up in the morning.

If I’m not out of the bedroom at what he considers my scheduled time, he bangs his paw on the door until I open it.

It’s nice to have a backup if I do oversleep, but Kola doesn’t have the concept of “day off” in his feline lexicon, so on mornings when I can sleep in, my cat alarm still goes off as usual.

I still find myself wondering if all these Lassie moments are just bizarre coincidences, but you can’t be too careful. So the other day I sat both Koi and Kola down and asked them to give me a heads up if they sense an earthquake is coming, just in case.

Roger H. Aylworth is a staff writer with the Enterprise-Record. His column appears every Sunday and he can be reached by e-mail at raylowrth@chicoer.com.